Methods of density estimation for pedestrians moving in small groups without a spatial boundary

For a group of pedestrians without any spatial boundaries, the methods of density estimation is a wide area of research. Besides, there is a specific difficulty when the density along one given pedestrian trajectory is needed in order to plot an `individual-based’ fundamental diagram. We illustrate why several methods become ill-defined in this case. We then turn to the widely used Voronoi-cell based density estimate. We show that for a typical situation of crossing flows of pedestrians, Voronoi method has to be adapted to the small sample size. We conclude with general remarks about the meaning of density measurements in such context.